Research on feigned mental disorders indicates that severe psychopathology coupled with significant trauma histories often complicate feigning determinations, resulting in inaccuracies on otherwise effective measures. As part of malingering assessments, the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) is often used because of its excellent validation…

The Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure (SWAP) is a personality assessment instrument designed for use by expert clinical assessors. Critics have raised questions about its psychometrics, most notably its validity across observers and situations, the impact of its fixed score distribution on research findings, and its test-retest reliability. We…

Research on the factor structure of psychopathy has yielded mixed results, supporting anywhere from one to three factors. Additionally, most of this research has used all-male samples, and the possibility of structural invariance across gender has not been examined. Using a mixed-gender sample of 360 undergraduates, the factor structure of the…

Personality assessment is a potentially important component of clinical and empirical work with neurological patients because (a) individual differences in personality may be associated with different neurological outcomes and (b) central nervous system changes may give rise to alteration in personality. For personality assessment to be useful to…

Informant reports can provide important information regarding the presence of pathological personality traits, and they can serve as useful supplements to self-report instruments. Ratings from a spouse may be a particularly valuable source of personality assessment because spouses are very well acquainted with the target person, have typically…

This study investigates the measurement equivalence of a five-factor measure of personality across two groups applying for jobs, who completed the same questionnaire using either a paper-and-pencil (n = 429) or a web online answer format (n = 651). The data were collected using the Big Five Questionnaire-2 (BFQ-2; which is a measure of the Five…

Although not originally designed for implementation in correctional settings, researchers and clinicians have begun to use the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) to assess offenders. A relatively small number of studies have made attempts to validate the alcohol and drug abuse scales of the PAI, and only a very few studies have validated those…

In the current investigation, the authors examined the diagnostic construct validity of the "Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2-Restructured Form" (MMPI-2-RF) in a patient sample. All participants were diagnosed via the "Structured Clinical Interview" for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID-I/P). The data set used in this…

Multi-item multiscale self-report measures are increasingly used in inpatient assessments. When considering a measure for this setting, it is important to evaluate the psychometric properties of the clinical scales and items to ensure that they are functioning as intended in a highly distressed clinical population. The present study examines scale…

The structure and psychometric characteristics of the NEO Personality Inventory-3 (NEO-PI-3), a more readable version of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R), are examined and compared with NEO-PI-R characteristics using data from college student observer ratings of 5,109 adolescents aged 12 to 17 years from 24 cultures. Replacement…

This study evaluated the incremental validity of scores from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) and the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R) in a sample of mental health inpatients originally published by Archer, Griffin, and Aiduk (1995). The incremental validity of scores from the SCL-90-R primary symptom dimensions…

There have been no previous studies on how often psychologists conduct feedback and whether they view this practice as a useful component of assessment. To explore psychologists' feedback practices and their perception of the effects of feedback on their clients, the authors examined survey data from 719 psychologist members of the International…

Mental health professionals conducting screenings in jail settings face formidable challenges in identifying inmates at risk for major depression and suicide. Psychologists often rely on correctional staff to provide initial appraisals of those inmates requiring further evaluation. In a sample of 100 jail detainees, the effectiveness of two…

This study investigated the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Revised (MMPI-2; Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989) and the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991) with regard to each instrument's utility for discriminating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from depression and social phobia in a…

The Antisocial Features (ANT) scale of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) was subjected to taxometric analysis in a group of 2,135 federal prison inmates. Scores on the three ANT subscales--Antisocial Behaviors (ANT-A), Egocentricity (ANT-E), and Stimulus Seeking (ANT-S)--served as indicators in this study and were evaluated using the…